Simon & Garfunkel’s Central Park Concert Led to Another Breakup, Sources Say

On a cool, breezy fall day, half a million New Yorkers gathered at Central Park to lay eyes and ears to a reunion that few thought would ever happen: Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

The success of that redefining day, on Sept. 19, 1981, would go on to launch a reunion tour… and another breakup. 

The crowd, the largest ever in the park at that time, was estimated at 500,000. At the time, PEOPLE reported that attendees ranged from “teens in denim and down to 40ish folkies,” and they all got what they wanted, as the famed duo flawlessly harmonized 20 songs, including “The Boxer,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “Homeward Bound” and “Scarborough Fair”.

Still, the tension around Simon & Garfunkel was palpable.

“They took a terrible risk,” one Simon associate told PEOPLE. “They could have not agreed on anything. Everybody sort of felt at one point or another, ‘God, I wish they’d never done this.’ It was like going on vacation with your ex-wife.”

Friends since elementary school, Simon & Garfunkel were one of the best-selling acts of the 1960s, but they split in 1970 due to creative differences following the success of that year’s album, Bridge over Troubled Water.

Although the men managed to get together sparingly over the next decade, their first legitimate full concert together in 11 years came on the Great Lawn of Manhattan’s most famous park. 

“This was a one-time get-together,” Simon’s personal manager, Ian Hoblyn, said then. “Still, they saw that crowd, and somewhere in the recesses, though not consciously, they must have felt, ‘Hey, look what we could do.’ ”

A triumphant event, Simon & Garfunkel did attempt to reunite after, particularly given that both of their solo careers were lagging. 

In last year’s new documentary “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon,” the 16-time GRAMMY winner recalled Central Park organizers coming to him after the “flop” of his 1980 album One-Trick Pony.

“When they asked me to do a concert in Central Park, I thought, ‘Well I just had this big flop, maybe I should ask Artie to come and sing some songs on this,’ ” he said. 

Initially, the two assumed their free concert would be a small benefit show for the park’s redevelopment and maintenance, but then 500,000 people turned up. The show, however, wasn’t without one tense moment when a concertgoer jumped on stage as Simon sang. Garfunkel was off to the side, watching the episode unfold with no reaction, which Simon found telling.

“The thing that’s interesting about it is like, my band, they’re ready to jump in,” Simon said. “Artie was sitting on the air… he was not taking a bullet for me.”

Regardless, due to the success of the concert, Simon, 83, said he was “forced” into a reunion tour, but wanted to start on the right foot, so he decided to forget his past grievances with Garfunkel, 83. 

“We were famously antagonistic, but I thought, ‘You know what? I am going to put that all aside and have a good reunited tour with Artie.’ ”

Soon, Simon announced that an album he’d been working on, Hearts and Bones, would be a Simon & Garfunkel record. However, that all changed when the duo disagreed on the album’s production, leading to another breakup. 

The album eventually became a solo album for Simon.

While the Central Park concert appeared to be a turning point for Simon & Garfunkel, in reality, it marked the beginning of the end again.

“The breakup that happened after [Garfunkel’s 1970 film] Catch-22 was never repaired,” Simon explained. “It was just a bandage put over it. But the bandage was such a luxurious bandage — the concert in Central Park — we forgot that essentially, we were done as a team.” 

Although the concert is no longer the most attended in Central Park’s history, it remains among the largest. Simon played in the park again in 1991.